At last, it's time! After years of waiting, I've finally had my chance to play Shadow of the Colossus. Back in my Nintendo fanboy days, this particular Playstation game always mystified me. And it's not hard to see why. The clue's in the title after all. Aside from that, there's all the praise surrounding its story, visuals, and technical achievements that made this one of my most anticipated games to dig into when I got my PS3.

I wonder why...

So, how did it hold up to the lofty expectations I've been building up for it all these years? I'm happy to say that, even now, Shadow of the Colossus definitely holds up. I'd expect nothing less from developers who take nearly an entire console generation to develop a single game.

So, our story is that some young wanderer takes his dead lady friend to a desolate wilderness to visit an imprisoned demon who he hopes can bring her back to life. The demon agrees to help him, but only if he can slay sixteen colossi that dwell nearby. I like this set up, because, while it is vague, it allows the player to fill the gaps however they please, while also having enough details to intrigue them. If you like to keep things simple and traditional, you can just assume the wanderer is trying to revive his dead lover. Or perhaps you'd rather imagine that the wanderer is actually the girl's killer, and is now trying to atone for his misdeed.

Either way, it doesn't get in the way of the stellar gameplay, most notably, the epic battles against the titular colossi. Each colossus must have had a great deal of work put into them. Beautifully animated, richly detailed with fur, rock, and bits of architecture, and each with their own unique design and combat mechanics. They're the stars of the game, without a doubt.

In a way, they're designed more like puzzles than the larger- than-life boss encounters you'd have in any other game. The wanderer doesn't have an extensive list of combos, nor will he have to perform any split-second dodging. The colossi themselves aren't terribly aggressive. They don't attack very often, and when they do, it's usually with wide, cumbersome strikes that can be avoided easily. Rather, the challenge comes in figuring out how to get on to the colossus and climb on its body to reach a weak point. Once you've figured out how to get on a colossus, you have to stay on as the beast tries to throw you off. This is where the grip gauge comes into play. As you hold on to a thrashing colossus, the gauge will deplete. Should it empty, you'll be flung off and forced to start the process over again. After you've successfully navigated your way up the colossus's anatomy to its glowing weak spot, you'll have to stab it repeatedly to finish it off. But these aren't quick pokes, mind you. You have to charge them up to deal damage, all the while the colossus is throwing its weight around and your grip gauge is starting to run dry. It's nothing short of exhilarating, and taking down a colossus feels like a monumental achievement in its own right.

But, at the same time there's also a sense of melancholy with each victory. The colossus aren't really villains. They aren't hurting anyone; they aren't plotting any diabolical schemes of world domination. The music that plays on their defeat isn't triumphant, it's mournful. You're killing a wondrous creature that will never grace the earth again. And the ominous black tendrils that come winding out of their dead bodies and shoot into the wanderer's, slowly corrupting him, give the impression that maybe we aren't doing the right thing in following the demon's lead. Don't you just love it when games make you question your actions?

The game's structure might be where Shadow of the Colossus may lose a few players. While its focus is on the colossus battles, that's certainly not all there is to it. Before you can fight a colossus, you have to get to it first. And that means riding across a mostly empty wasteland. There are no common enemies, no dungeons, no NPCs to interact with. Pretty much the only thing to do is make a pit stop at the odd altar to save your game or hunt lizards to increase your grip gauge. Which, incidentally, doesn't make a great deal of sense. Some may become fed up with galloping across open plains to get to the meat of the game.

However, I'm not one of those people who believes a game needs to be nonstop action all the time, with enemies, traps, and interactables strewn every five feet. The sandbox Shadow of the Colossus puts us in serves a very important purpose, that would have been lost had Team Ico gone for a more straightforward approach. It provides contrast between the colossi battles. After the bombastic music and the thrilling spectacle, it's nice that the game allows you to just sit back, relax, and peacefully ride a horse through its beautiful landscape, before going at it again. If the game had been entirely boss battles, with the overworld removed, I'd daresay it wouldn't have been quite so effective. Speaking for myself, I actually found a great deal of pleasure in going off the beaten path to explore that overworld even further than the game required, even if all it had to offer were scenic vistas.

Like this one!

Furthermore, it makes the game, as a whole, feel more cohesive. Once a colossus is felled, a shaft of light shoots up to the sky from its downed form. As you ride across the deserted land, you can always see these light pillars reminding you of the awesome wonders you've overcome. You can even go back to it and admire its remains. I think it would have been cool if you could fight the colossi in any order, or even see them striding across the landscape as you run up to engage them. Then again, this was a PS2 game, so there had to be some limitations. Which is why I'd like to see something like this made for current gen hardware. Not a remake or sequel, per se, but something the employs the same principles.

Speaking of horses, remember how at the VGA's last year, Aonuma and Miyamoto were presenting that Zelda Wii U footage and they talked about how Epona exhibited artificial intelligence and wouldn't run into trees? Turns out, Shadow of the Colossus was doing that a decade earlier. I'm not knocking Zelda Wii U, because this a feature I actually quite like. Sure, it makes controlling the horse, Agro, a little awkward. But, that's kind of the point. You aren't controlling the horse, you're riding it. It's an independent entity. And it was nice to navigate winding paths without running into walls or trees all the time on my part due to greater momentum, with the horse striding around them on its own. It felt like I was actually riding something, as opposed to using a glorified dash button.

It has a fair bit of extra content, too. After finishing the game, you unlock a time attack mode in new game+ that lets you fight any colossus you want right from the starting sanctuary. It's nice for those who might not have been so enthralled with the overworld as I was. There's also a hard mode and several fun trophies to work towards.

Shadow of the Colossus is an amazing game, but you already knew all that. It's been ten years since it first wowed gamers back on the PS2, and it hasn't aged badly in the slightest, aside from a few, minor visual hiccups. It's a classic, in every sense of the word, and I'm so glad I finally had a chance to play it for myself.

What's this? Bladefinger reviewing a Playstation game?! When, up until this point, he's covered Nintendo games almost exclusively?!

Fret not, dear reader. You're in no danger of being assaulted by a horde of flying pigs...yet. It's just that I've been looking to branch out for a while now. Many years, in fact. And with Nintendo's release schedule drying up to near nothingness this holiday season, I've finally had the perfect opportunity to purchase my first Nontendo piece of gaming hardware: a 20 GB Playstation 3. Why the PS3 you ask? Well, the PS4 may very well be in my future, but, at the moment, it's a little out of my price range. Meanwhile, the PS3 is much cheaper and has a much more robust library. Plus, it can play PS1 and PS2 games, allowing me to catch up on about two decade's worth of Playstation history. And what better place to start than with the one Playstation game that has intrigued me the most over the years: Shadow of the Colossus?

Well, its predecessor, Ico, I guess. Since I went with the HD collection, starting with the second game would've felt a little weird. Looks like Shadow of the Colossus is gonna have to wait for a later day, kids. So, I've spent the past few days playing through Ico, which was, appropriately enough, developed by Team Ico. Ico is about Ico. That's Ico the boy, mind you, not Ico the video game or Ico the Japanese video game developer who developed Ico the game about Ico the boy. Can't see how this could get confusing. He's brought to the castle to be sacrificed because he has horns on his heads. Before the sacrifice can be carried out, he breaks free of his confinement and teams up with a mysterious girl, named Yorda.

If you have any sort of experience with most video games, you may have several warning sirens blaring in your head with that last sentence, because it correctly denotes that Ico is one long escort quest, one of the cardinal sins of game design. But turn off those warning signs, and let me tell you that Ico takes a nuanced and thoughtful approach to the escort quest that elevates it above the simple gimmick used in an attempt to add some brief variety.

Speaking strictly in terms of gameplay, whenever enemies get involved, they themselves are of little threat to Ico. Since there's no health bar, the worst an enemy can to do to Ico is knock him down, leaving him lying prone for a bit. Instead, Yorda is the goal of any confrontation. Ico must protect her, fending off any enemies. And if any do happen to grab her, they have to carry her off to their black hole spawn point and slowly drag her into it, giving the player ample time to run over and pull her right back out again. So, combat, in general, is rather forgiving, if a but frustrating. The combat mechanics are so threadbare, the enemy roster so limited to a handful of hazy foes, and you're so often forced into a combat situations it leaves this aspect feeling repetitive. I'm not saying Ico needs to become Bayonetta, or anything. Still, adding in a little more variety or lowering the number of combat encounters would have helped immensely.

But it's in the little details where the relationship between Ico and Yorda really shines. The way the two of them hold hands as Ico leads Yorda through the confines of the castle. Or when they sit down together on a bench to save the game. Since they don't speak the same language, their interactions are based entirely on what they do, not what they say. The game doesn't rely on dialog to define how Ico and Yorda relate, and instead opts to show us, and, indeed, partake in a lot of it. I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who, like the me of a few days ago, haven't played this game to completion, but the ending was especially powerful and meaningful. And Team Ico managed all of that with just a few words.

Special mention must be made of Ico's castle, which could almost be considered a character unto itself. A sprawling, interconnected fortress brimming with atmosphere. Some of the best moments of the game were spent gazing at the scenery and seeing how the castle grounds looped back on itself. There's not much music, but the ambiance is superb. The inner castle areas are haunted by droning wind and outer areas are pleasantly graced with birdsong. And what little music there is is equally commendable. Seriously, “You Were There” might just be one of my favorite pieces of video game music ever composed.

And it'd be remiss of me to not touch on the art direction. This was one of the early games to hit the PS2, and while it may not be the most obviously technically impressive game, what with environments being mostly empty and the castle being segmented into loading screens, there's no denying that Ico is a joy to look at. I said before that Ico wasn't “the most obviously technically impressive game”, it still used the PS2's then-advanced capabilities in more subtle ways than flooding the environment with NPCs. The use of lighting, animation tricks, and improved AI make it clear that moving this game from the PS1 was the best idea.

All this talk, and I haven't really touched on what kind of game Ico really is. The Wikipedia page lists it as a puzzle platformer/action adventure, and that seems to be a fair classification. There's definitely a lot of puzzling to be done as you make your way through the castle. These puzzles have two sides to them. Two sides that work their way back to Ico and Yorda. Most of Ico's puzzles first involve getting Ico to where he needs to be. The second part involves clearing a path for Yorda, so she can follow. There's a smattering of platforming as well, but it's a troublesome smattering. The camera generally does a good job of framing the action, but occasionally, that won't be the case, resulting in a cheap Game Over when Ico falls to his death. You can't rotate the camera to get a better view; you can only pan it around.

Ico is the poster child for minimalistic design. It eschews many common video game conventions. There's no high score, no power-ups, no RPG elements, no sweeping character archs, no online multiplayer. Its mechanics are simple and streamlined. Not a single bit of it feels like wasted space or padding. Even the combat, which I somewhat criticized earlier, still serves an important purpose. In the end, it manages to do more with what little it has than most games do with every square foot of their inflated terrain. It takes a story as simple and rote as a young boy rescuing a girl from the clutches of evil, and manages to turn it into something special, something meaningful and memorable. And that's not sorcery; it's just good game design.

Since Star Fox Zero managed to leave such a good impression on me during E3 this year, I decided to finally pick up Star Fox 64 3D while it was on sale in the eShop. I'd played the original version back on the Wii's Virtual Console, but for whatever reason, it never really grabbed me and I'd always wanted to play the 3DS remake instead. It's certainly a lot easier than I remember. I recall having a great deal of trouble with it back then, dying multiple times without having gotten all the way through to the end. Now, with the 3DS version, I only died during the real final boss and the subsequent escape sequence. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that the 3DS version has the option to revert the Arwing controls back to the realm of common sense (up is up, down is down), which is but one of a few improvements offered by this remake. And don't worry, if you're one of those contrary sorts of people who prefer inverted controls, you can always switch to those at will.

Do an Aileron Roll! Eh, doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

Most notably, the graphics have been notably improved. In addition to more polygons and better textures, the N64's trademark distance fog is removed, allowing us to see more of the environment as we blast through it.

The game puts you through a series of on-rails shooting sections in a starfighter called an Arwing, piloted by Fox McCloud. The goal is to shoot down enemies to rack up as many points as possible. You'll gain more points by taking out grouped enemies with a charged shot, which also features lock-on and homing features. Occasionally, the game switches to all-range mode, where you fly freely around a small arena, getting into dogfights with enemy pilots. Sometimes you'll be piloting a tank or submarine, both with their own unique features that set them apart from the Arwing.

There's a fun, arcadey vibe to the proceedings, which lends the game a great deal of replayability. It's short, so it's fun to go back through it multiple times to try at a higher score. Star Fox also features a branching path system, wherein, if you complete various tasks or meet certain criteria in a level, you'll progress to an alternate area. This allows for a great deal of variety in individual playthroughs, although it's worth noting only one path rewards you with the true final boss and the best ending. Which makes sense, but it kinda devalues the other paths, since they aren't quite as satisfying or challenging. Personally, I feel giving each path its own story beats and challenges would have helped make each one feel worth revisiting. For instance, the game could have one path be focused more on dogfighting, another on piloting maneuvers, and another on pure, on-rails action. Whatever the case, the multiple paths add a lot more variety to what is otherwise a fairly straightforward game.

The controls are very precise, or at least they are in the 3DS version. Thank heavens there's an option to play with normal flight controls, or I would've spent the entire time crashing into the ground when I wanted to ascend. There's quite a lot of aerial tricks you can pull if in the Arwing, from the ever popular barrel rolls (or aileron roll, if you want to be accurate), somersaults, and U-turns. They're intuitive and satisfying to pull off. If I had to criticize something, I'd say the lock-on can be a bit troublesome. First off, you can only lock-on once your laser is fully charged, which means you'll fire off a few uncharged bolts when holding down the fire button. Which means, if you were aiming at a cluster of enemies you intended to take down with a charged shot for extra points, you might accidentally kill a few of them, ruining to the combo. This could have been avoided if shots were charged immediately when holding down the fire button. If you happen to lock on to the wrong enemy, it can be rather difficult to cancel the lock in time to charge up another shot for you intended target. Since Star Fox 64 3D is mostly a fast-paced on-rails game, if you lock on to the wrong target, there's not much of a chance you'll be able to correct the error before your intended target flies offscreen, unhurt. There's no way around this that I can think of, so you'll just have to be careful about where you lock-on.

Another big feature of Star Fox are the allies who accompany you on your quest: Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad.

The Star Fox Crew.

Throughout the game, they'll constantly pepper you with one-liners, commenting on what's going on, and hammering home their overall, one-note personality. I know a lot of people have a great deal of fondness for the these characters, but I found them to be rather annoying. Slippy, in particular, has earned himself quite a level of notoriety, but he's probably the least offensive of the three since he is the most useful, what with being able to reveal a boss's health bar and all. Meanwhile, Falco does next to nothing except constantly fly into my line of fire and berate me when he gets hit by it. All of Fox's three wingmen are constantly getting into trouble, and you're the one who has to save them every single time. I'd be more forgiving of them if they were interesting characters, but they're all so one-dimensional. To be fair, Falco does have one interesting story bit when dealing with a side character during one of the levels, but it doesn't really go anywhere beyond intrigue, and it's dropped promptly after that level is done. A little more of stuff like this would have gone a long way in justifying these characters.

What it all comes down to is whether or not the game is fun. And Star Fox 64 3D is fun. Annoying side characters aside, there's a lot to enjoy in flying around and blasting everything in sight. And as far as that simple premise goes, Star Fox has a lot of variety, from playing with different vehicles to going through alternate progression paths. If you too are looking to get into the series ahead of its upcoming Wii U release, there's no better way to start than firing up your 3DS and taking this old bird, or fox, for a spin.

Can you think of a game that's had more of a cultural impact than Super Metroid?

I mean, how many games can you think of who's title is used to name an entire genre? Well, half a genre, anyway. We don't call military shooters “Call of Duties” nor do we call jump scare horror games “Freddies”. But, we've been calling nonlinear exploration games “Metroidvanias” for years now. Titles like Dark Souls and Metroid Prime have been carrying this particular torch into the modern era, and we recently saw the release of Axiom Verge. But regardless of whether or not you feel Castlevania is the worthier half, there's no denying that Super Metroid has contributed a lot to the genre.

The defining feature of Metroidvania is the exploration of interconnected areas that gradually open up as the player acquires more skills and weapons. And Super Metroid definitely has that down to a “T”. The map is labyrinthine, sprawling with chambers and tunnels to explore, with secrets and shortcuts abounding. And thank goodness there's actually a map this time around. If there's one thing that made the first two Metroids so annoying, it was the complete lack of a map, save for the one you drew hurriedly on a piece of scrap paper. It makes it a lot easier to avoid getting lost. But Super Metroid's map screen does a few notable deficiencies. For one, it doesn't show doors or any indication as to how the various rooms link up, so it's entirely possible for you to start a trek to a certain room, only to have your progress impeded by a dead end, forcing you to turn back and figure out how you were actually supposed to get to your destination.

It doesn't do a very good job of mapping secrets either. All you get is a dot telling you there's a secret in a given area and that's it. It doesn't differentiate between a power-up you picked up or one you missed for whatever reason, nor does it account for two expansions being in the same area. And the game has an awful habit of hiding power-ups and secret paths behind totally inconspicuous tiles. You'd have no idea these tiles were blocking anything special without systematically morph balling every single one of them, which is tedious, or using the X-ray visor, which is cumbersome to use as it prevents you from dashing and has to be selected from Samus's sub weapons every time you want to use it. Sometimes it'll hide these things without giving any indication whatsoever, not even a dot on the map screen. Trust me, if you plan on 100%'ing Super Metroid, you may want to keep a complete map from the internet handy.

Thankfully, moving around in Super Metroid works well. By default, Samus's running speed goes at a good clip, and you can even hold down a button to have her go into a dash. Samus has a lot of movement enhancing power-ups, including one that allows her to run at super speeds, which is always fun.

Platforming can get a little sticky at times especially when you need to use the space jump, but it's not as bad as it was in the Metroid Prime Trilogy. At least in this instance we can clearly see where our feet reside spatially. The wall jump is a major pain in the ass, though. I understand that it's an advanced technique that isn't necessary even to fully complete the game. But why, then, does the game trick you into getting stuck in a pit where the only way out is to use this supposedly optional advanced technique? It doesn't make sense to force such a difficult-to-master maneuver on the player when it isn't ever necessary to progress in any other area.

Like this little guy!

Back in its day, Super Metroid was the biggest game made for the Super Nintendo, coming in at a whopping twenty-four megabits! The expansive size really shows in the boss fights. Super Metroid's bosses are generally massive, with one of them having a sprite large enough to fill several screens.

These fights are pretty challenging as the bosses have an array of attacks that can slice through an unprepared hunter's energy tanks with frightening ease. Some even require unique strategies to subdue. The most notable example is Crocomire, who is practically immune to Samus's weaponry, but recoils as shots are fired into its gaping jaws. The battle is a constant ebb and flow of positioning, where players have to stay close enough to take advantage of the small window when its mouth is open, but distant enough to avoid Crocomire's attacks, which send them flying backwards, giving the beast the chance to regain his ground, eventually forcing the player against a wall of spikes. But, if the player manages to push Crocomire back far enough, the floor beneath him will collapse into a pool of acid, killing the creature.

One thing I wish Super Metroid, and other Metroid games in general, would adopt is some sort of fast travel system. Exploration is all well and good, but going back and through the same areas over and over again can get a little grating. Being able to travel instantaneously between save points would alleviate this problem.

On the other hand, Super Metroid has one feature I'd love to see make a return to the series, and that's the spare energy tanks. These special energy tanks don't actually count towards Samus's total, but are rather used to store excess energy the player might collect. Should the player lose all the energy in their main energy tanks, the spare sub tanks will automatically restore the player's health, in accordance to how much excess energy they had stored up, or they can do so at will. It's a nice little touch that keeps players collecting health orbs, even after they've maxed out their health meter.

The Ice Beam is used to great effect in Super Metroid, and pretty much all 2D Metroids, for that matter. It combines combat and platforming in an interesting way. Using the Ice Beam on an enemy temporarily freezes it, allowing Samus to hop on its back and use it as a platform.

Another thing about Super Metroid that I'll happily commend is the way it presents its narrative. Aside from the odd, brief cinematic, there are no cutscenes to interrupt game flow, all the way to the final confrontation with the resurrected Mother Brain. The story is told almost entirely within gameplay. It picks up after the events of Metroid II with Samus dropping off the baby Metroid she befriended back on SR388 with a group of scientists. It's only a matter of time before Space Pirates attack. Samus arrives on the scene mere moments after the attack to find all the scientists lying dead on the floor and the baby Metroid missing. She finds it again in the hands of Ridley, who flies off and leaves her to escape the science facility as it begins to self-destruct. Samus gives chase, and follows the Space Pirates to their old haunting grounds on Zebes.

It's easy to see how Super Metroid managed to become such a success. Even over twenty years after its release, it still stands as a stellar example of game design, the game that defined a genre. In spite of its odd quirks, the game has lost none of its playability, a testament to the timelessness of the design. Many games have come after Super Metroid, and have definitely expanded upon its formula, but that doesn't make it any less of a seminal title that deserves to be on anyone's must-play list.

It's been over two decades since Mortal Kombat shocked the world and enthralled gamers with what was then seen as “over-the-top” violence. After such a long time, it seems strange that a game like Madworld, that similarly revels in the spray of red, would be such a big deal. I guess that goes to show how engrained the Wii was in the mind of popular culture as the “family-friendly” system.

What wholesome family entertainment!

If Madworld had been released on any of the other major platforms at the time, no one would've batted an eye. It would've been just another M-rated game to add to the pile. But because it was on a Nintendo console, the Wii, no less, it drew quite a lot of attention with its blood and gore. Not that the attention helped it much. It didn't sell very well. I didn't even pick it up myself until five years after it launched, for a mere $3! In spite of how many copies were sold, Madworld does make for one interesting game. Not only was it one of the few notable “Mature” games in the Wii's library, it was also one of the first games developed by the illustrious Platinum Games. Let's dive into this forgotten little gem and see what it has to offer!

Madworld is set in Varrigan City, which is under the sway of a terrorist organization. The terrorists cut the city off from the rest of world and infects the populace with a deadly virus. All to force them to partake in a bloody battle royale called “Death Watch” if they wish to survive. You play as Jack Cayman, an ex-military agent with a chip on his shoulder and a retractable chainsaw in his mechanical arm. Jack enters Death Watch, but it's clear he's in for more than just “the win”. He's in communication with an outside agent over an earpiece. Ulterior motives aside, Jack still manages to earn sponsorship in Death Watch from the enigmatic “Agent XIII”. With a sponsorship under his belt, it's up to you and Jack to cut a swathe through the ragtag ranks of would-be murderers to get to the bottom of the terrorist attack, and put a stop to whatever shenanigans might be going on in the background.

The plot starts off fairly simple. Jack's mission seems to be straightforward: figure out what's going on behind Death Watch and put a stop to it. But as the player progresses through the game, more and more plot details emerge, and what was once a mere bloodbath becomes a tale about terrorism, political conspiracies, class warfare, the nature of power, pharmaceuticals, and the glorification of violence in media. That's a lot for any game to take on. Unfortunately, Madworld doesn't handle it with absolute grace. Its story themes are so divorced from the tone presented in its gameplay, it's almost like they're in two separate works. Believe it or not, but it's hard to take a story about all those themes mentioned above seriously when one of the recurring characters is a heavily stereotyped black gangster who's constantly getting murdered by his lady gimp.

So, Madworld has that same love of the ridiculous that Platinum is known for. While the overarching story goes about tackling such serious real world issues, the gameplay is perfectly content to sit back and revel in how insane the situation is. You'll fight standard punks, ninjas, zombies, werewolves, robots, aliens, stormtroopers, psychics, a rollerskating gunslinger, and even a giant Frankenstein's monster at some point. Sometimes you'll just saw your enemies in half with a chainsaw and other times you'll be tossing them into jet turbines or boiling them alive in tempura batter. It really is a mad world, isn't it?

Better watch yourself.

Which is why I think Jack was the perfect character for this game. On the surface, he may seem like yet another gruff, macho anti-hero, and he is. But he's dispassionate with his actions. He's not killing to survive, or to further some higher goal, or even for his own enjoyment. He's doing it because it's what's expected of him. Jack feels the same way about a horde of fleshy antagonists to be murdered as a clerk feels about a towering pile of forms to be worked over, a routine. As violent and bizarre as Madworld gets, Jack still reacts to everything like it's something he's done a million times before, an interesting statement on the emphasis our medium has on violence, to be sure. It's been done so many times, it's becomes meaningless.

Then again, this is a game where you fight a busty vampire babe and get distracted by her tits, so maybe I'm just being overly philosophical. So, let's talk about the gameplay. Fortunately, in spite of Jack's apparent lack of enthusiasm, Madworld is still an enjoyable game to play. It would have been all too easy to make the game utterly boring and repetitive to further it's message at the expense of player enjoyment. Thankfully, Platinum didn't go down that route, at least not entirely.

While playing in Death Watch, the goal is to wrack up points by killing as many other contestants as possible, until you earn enough points to take on the boss of the stage. A simple venture, to be sure, as most of the enemies in Madworld aren't at all difficult. They go down in just a few hits, and can be chopped in half with a single swipe of the chainsaw. But that won't get you anywhere fast. Instead of getting through a horde of enemies as quickly as possible, your job is to make sure they die in the most excruciating, prolonged, and violent manner possible. This forces the player to use the environment to their advantage to wrack up the best score for each kill. You can toss guys into a meat grinder, throw 'em in the way of a speeding train, fry 'em in a giant cauldron, or you can drive a sign post through a guy's head, throw him in a barrel, then finish him off on a wall of spikes. The more complex the kill, the more points you'll earn. As your score climbs higher and higher, you can unlock new weapons to eviscerate your foes with, health pick-ups, and themed challenges that can help boost your score even further.

So the game is designed like a succession of small sandboxes, putting players in the middle of them to explore the environment to find death traps to facilitate their efforts to become the most brutal killer in Death Watch. Sadly, the environment is too limited for Madworld's unique gameplay design not to get a bit repetitive. You can chuck guys in barrels then toss 'em into some fan blades, but it's hard to dismiss the feeling that you're just grinding until the game gives you a pat on the back.

That said, the basic combat is still visceral enough to make up for this somewhat. I mean, how can slicing a line of guys in half with a chainsaw not have at least some degree of carnal satisfaction? It is a bit slow though. This was before Bayonetta, so Platinum had not yet written the book on character action. Jack moves too sluggishly. His jumping ability is laughably limited, so don't expect any air juggling combos. Once he grabs an enemy, the paces slows even more as you have to headbutt a grappled foe a few times to stun him then slowly drag him to some death trap to throw him into. Tying dodging to motion controls doesn't help matters either. Dodging is the sort of action that needs to have the responsiveness of a button to work properly. Waggling the Nunchuk to backflip out of an enemy's attack just feels sticky and unintuitive. The lock-on also functions rather poorly. And if you come to a place where there's a lot of enemies on screen, look forward to the framerate starting to chug.

Once you get through enough grunts to classify yourself as a natural disaster, it's on to the boss! At this point, however, the game becomes more like your average action game. Whereas getting to the boss fight necessitated devious use of the environment, bosses are triumphed by the more standard ebb and flow dodging and attacking, which leaves them feeling incongruous with the rest of the game. These fights are interspersed with QTEs that'll be dealing most of the damage. And, boy, if you thought QTEs were bad when they were just button mashing, wait until you experience Madworld's special take on them with...motion controls! Isn't the future fun? Thankfully, these bosses are still fun to fight thanks to their eccentric designs and horrific killing blows.

One of the best reasons to play this game is for the commentators who spectate Jack's rampage. Voiced by Greg Proops and John DiMaggio, these characters provide a humorous outlook on all the violence going onscreen. My one complaint with them is that they do tend to repeat themselves quite a bit. But, they're well worth keeping on for the odd pearl of wisdom, even if it gets repeated ad infinitum.

But, what's most striking about Madworld is its presentation. The game uses a strict black and white color palette to contrast the bright red sprays of blood. You can make the argument that this was simply used due to the Wii's limitations, but whatever the reason, it winds up looking very stylish and has aged incredibly well over the years.

Sadly, the entire game feels kinda short. There aren't many levels in the game, so it won't take you long to finish it. I managed to see the ending in just a handful of hours. There's a New Game+, but all that adds is a hard mode and a couple new weapons to play around with. Not quite an experience that justifies a $50 price tag. But it's not $50 anymore. Now that it's far less than $10 used in GameStops across the country it's well worth picking up. Madworld may be short and shallow, but it has the same stylish spark that would later make Platinum a household name.